Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an in-vehicle camera.
Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (JP-A) No. 2013-203250 discloses an in-vehicle camera for recording in a vehicle forward direction through a front glass. The in-vehicle camera is equipped with a bracket and a camera component. The bracket is adhered to a vehicle interior-side surface of the front glass, and the camera component is secured to the bracket.
In this connection, in the in-vehicle camera disclosed in JP-A No. 2013-203250, when covering the camera component with a cover from the vehicle interior side, a gap that becomes necessary in consideration of variations between parts is disposed between the cover and the front glass.
However, there is the concern that an unintended image of the instrument panel, for example, will be reflected by the front glass, pass through the gap (particularly the gap at the front end portion of the cover), and be reflected into the camera component.
Therefore, in order to prevent an unintended image from being reflected, it would be conceivable to increase the size of the cover in the vehicle forward direction. However, if the size of the cover were to be increased, the obstruction to the field of view of the driver would increase, which is not desirable.
Furthermore, the gap also has the role of taking, into the inside of the cover, air from a defroster device disposed in the instrument panel. For that reason, for example, if the front end of the hood in JP-A No. 2013-203250 were to be brought into contact with the front glass or the front end of the cover were to be brought into contact with the front glass to thereby completely close off the gap, fog on the front glass would become unable to be cleared away by the air from the defroster device.